


Plead The Fifth

by Flustered



Series: Dancing Darcy AUs [2]
Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe- Thief, F/M, Flirting but with sex jokes and sass, Humor, Sass, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Theif!Darcy, Tony Stark Has An Ego
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:01:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7961653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flustered/pseuds/Flustered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It would be fun</em>, they said. <em>There won't be any problems</em>, they said. <em>Go steal Iron Man's blueprints</em>, they said.</p><p>'They' is actually Darcy, and technically this is entirely her fault. (But it's mostly her soulmate's as well. Go figure.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello new friends!
> 
> I don't really have much to say, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the story.
> 
> And to those who have stuck with me on my haunting journey through writing one of my other books: shut up, sit down, and comment. It's my life blood. You know the drill.

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t begin with a cool sentence. Or even anything of that nature. No, this book doesn’t get off with a good start, unlike some of the true classics of all time. There is no Hobbit in a non-dirty muddy wet hole in a hill, or a galaxy so far far away, or some odd street in England housing two stooges, a bratty son, and a twig that lived under the staircase.

No, this story begins and ends with Tony Stark’s gigantic ego.

Which can be explained in four separate trilogies with each book having a 300,000+ word count. However, they can all be summed up in a few select words that shall not repeated just in case there are children reading this. But if they were put into memes, Tony busted his nuts a lot, became a sad pepe the frog after getting rektd by some alcohol, and became a real life Rick Roll’er to everybody in his vicinity. And basically thought that he was super dank for doing all of that. But you must remember, Reader, that Tony Stark is to blame for this.

It is no secret that when it comes to his pride and mostly his ego, Tony Stark is a complete and utter moron. A brilliant idiot, when his mind comes down to it, but he does not see the same things that a regular person can. No, Tony Stark, when put upon display, will say the most ludicrous things. Most of the material on the internet was of him doing stupid things were because of dares, bets, or simply because he thought he could do something better. God knows what goes through his head. God bless Virginia Potts for being his CEO. But because of his manly pride, his ability to not see things, and how they would affect people, he had caused this catastrophe of a story.

It was a peaceful day, same as every other day. Albeit it was a little cloudy, and maybe the leaves had started to turn different colors in New York, but it was the same exact day as it has been for the last few weeks. However the difference was Tony Stark, owner of Stark Industries was asked about the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

You see, there's been a new art exhibit that was extremely popular in New York at the moment, because it was all about the Avengers. There were posters of Hawkeye when he was in the circus, some guns that the Black Widow had used herself, old pictures and declassified documents of the Hulk, even the Smithsonian had sent over some of Captain America’s stuff. The first blueprints of the Iron Man armor were on display, not all of them of course, but like the really cool bits instead of the technical stuff.

Anyways, due to all of the important bits here and there, Stark Industries took over the security system in the Met. Who knew what led up to Tony Stark saying those words on live television, but the question had been asked.

“Mr. Stark, do you think that your new security measures will dissuade any potential robberies in the future?”

“Ellen, I can call you Ellen, right? My security measures are state of the art, never been seen before, and an absolute thing of perfection. I had Natasha, the Black Widow, test it before I opened the doors to the Met. If she couldn’t get past it without setting off an alarm, then who can? There is no way that anybody can get past it all and escape clean. In fact, I’d like to see them try.”

And if that wasn’t an invitation, what is?

At that same moment Darcy Lewis watched the news in front of a store, the TV pointed out into the street. The small town far into the West was almost empty of people on the streets, but the cool October day was almost too beautiful to spend it inside. The trees were loaded with different colored leaves, and the ground was littered with them. A long knitted scarf wrapped around her neck, slowly reading the words appearing at the bottom of the screen.

_TONY STARK INVITES ANYBODY TO STEAL FROM THE MET._

She smiles.

And that, my dear Readers, is how this mindfuckery of a story began.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some odd reason, I had decided that I hadn't liked my original idea and had tried going with a couple of different ways as to how I could make this book. However, it wasn't working the way I had wanted it to, so I stopped waffling around and went back to my original idea which is a lot more fun to write. However, in that moment of hesitation, I managed to make four different versions of this chapter. And all of them were hell but this one, so enjoy.

The first time Darcy stole, it was a Malibu Barbie from Stacy Francis in Mr. Holden's class in 2nd grade because she told everybody that Darcy liked Dungeons and Dragons. Well, it was the first _real_ time that she’s stolen, from somebody who didn’t knew she was going to steal something of theirs. She planned it all out, it was her very first mission, so she knew it down to the last detail. (She even had the plans that she had made in crayon to this day.)

For a seven year old girl, it was terrifying. The plan was while Stacy was at her gymnastics class on Thursday, Darcy will knock on her door and ask to see if Stacy could play. Darcy would then ask if she could use the family phone to call her dad to come and get her and then ‘wait’ for him to come. When Miss Francis would leave her alone she’d then go into Stacy’s room really fast and put the Malibu Barbie in her backpack. Then escape. Simple, yeah?

But the prospect of Miss Francis finding out that Darcy was a dirty rotten liar and was going to steal her daughter's Malibu Barbie might bring the prospect of the _police_. And police were bad, very very bad. So bad, _he_ might leave her to the foster system. So a lot was at stake for a seven year old.

Thankfully, Miss Francis just had a little baby boy so she was easily distracted and Darcy was able to sneak away to pretend to use the bathroom. The Malibu Barbie was in her possession and Darcy skipped all the way home to the cheap apartment that she lived in with her guardian.

She couldn’t really say he was her dad or uncle, he told her right off the bat that she wasn’t to call him anything but his first name, or he’d send her back to foster care. Charles, that’s what a lot of people called him. But Darcy liked to call him Charlie, because of Charlie Brown who was kinda cute but always sad and had this amazing dog. Whenever she had the chance to watch movies in class, especially over the holidays, it was always Charlie Brown.

Charlie, in real life, however, was in fact not sad or cute at all. And no matter how many times Darcy begged, he wouldn't buy her a puppy. But he was nice, when Darcy did the things that he asked for. Everything he did, he did it to teach a lesson. It made sense, and Darcy really did want to learn, because what Charlie did was really cool. He stole stuff from other people, and he taught her to do the same things. Even the things that he couldn’t.

Everything had a lesson. And because Darcy understood that, she didn’t really make a huge fuss that she was locked in a closet, and had to pick the lock in the darkness. (Okay, so it was scary for the first time. But after that, it was a piece of cake.) Or the couple of times when Charlie wanted Darcy to hack for him, and he didn’t give her any food until she had successfully got whatever information he wanted from whatever.

Now, that Darcy is much older, she can see that Charlie was a complete douche bag and a child abuser, she is glad that she had cut off any and all ties to that man. But it was also bittersweet, as he had given her also the abilities that she enjoyed using so much.

Charlie taught her everything, from when Darcy had come home from stealing the Barbie and giving her firecrackers to light the bitch up to how to paint a realistic fake and to bake it at 125 degrees in the oven for the paint to age. He taught her how to remain flexible and to do the classic spy move to twist and cartwheel around lasers, and he taught her that her skills with technology was nothing to laugh at.

Darcy has always been smart. Smarter than she should be at her age, but she’s never taken an IQ test before so she didn’t know where on the scale of intelligence she would land on. But she figured she was pretty high up because most kids don’t learn how to hack into multi-million companies when they were just nine years old. Especially on those old squares blocks that some people would call computers. Back when Windows was the newest on the market and floppy disks were still being used. CD’s, were a blessing when they came out, and Darcy was always thrilled with new technology.

Today, however, was a very special day. She was to see the results of a three day hack binge that only cheap coffee would see her through to the end at. Darcy had passed out for almost a complete day after that, but unless somebody caught onto what she had changed, she was still in the clear.

Darcy was competitive. No question about that, nope siree. That’s why she had done a really stupid thing and had taken on Tony Stark’s challenge about the Met’s security. In fact, only a few people tried it out. All of them had been arrested, and Darcy knew right off the bat that she was not going to be even in the same state as the Met when she stole from it.

No, she worked with technology very well, and she might as well use her skills than to walk blindly into a museum that had been fitted with new tech that no thief had ever fiddled with before. In fact, Darcy herself had once encountered Stark Tech before in a theft. The story ended with Darcy trying to climb up a wire fence as fast as she could as large dogs barked nearby and alarms sounded in the distance. She had managed to rip her suit on the fence, and so she had to awkwardly drive back to her safe house with a very large tear on her right butt cheek.

One does not walk into Mordor. Or into the Met museum because once Stark put his mind to it, there was no way that Darcy would have been able to steal a pamphlet much less anything else. The pictures that she’s seen on the internet weren’t good enough to get a scope on things, but there were obviously metal detectors, more cameras than a museum could properly afford, and a lot more men in black than usual.

Tony Stark was brilliant, but so was Darcy. And besides, she had one advantage that Tony Stark could never have.

She was a girl, and he was a boy. (Can I make it anymore obvious?)

And that meant, Tony Stark was brilliant, but was also very much like an egotistical idiot like any other man. He had pride in his work. An ego that was bigger than the planet. And so that made him blind.

Did he happen to update the museums servers? Not really, just added a lot of high end firewalls. But Darcy had once hacked into the Pentagon once (which was really boring because it was all politics. Who even wants to become a politician. Like, seriously), and even though it wasn’t as high quality as Stark’s version, it was still hackable. Everything had a backdoor, some more hidden than most. And it had taken Darcy almost three days to practice her magic to get right through into the old outdated servers of the museum inventory. After that, twenty minutes tops to choose a target of which she wanted to steal, and then replace the delivering address with a PO box two hours away from Darcy’s home base.

Why steal it from the museum, when it would just mail it to you? _And_ free shipping? Who wouldn't pass up that?

And so yeah, it wasn’t that hard. Darcy has spent a lot more time going through blueprints for a single heist than what she did on Stark’s system. Although she did put in a lot of effort, but media said it was a challenge, not a walk in the park. And for a while, Darcy had been stumped. It had taken her a while to pave an untraceable path through the firewalls, especially there were so many alerts in the code it was like trying to run in a dog park without stepping in some mutts shit.

That was almost three months ago. The Avengers exhibit in the Met had ended almost a week ago, and hopefully by now her prize should be waiting for her. A lot of museums tend to ship things out the night after the exhibit ended, so that they didn’t have as many objects to hold onto until later. And no doubt Stark had it so that none of the pieces were in the danger of being vulnerable for thieves just like Darcy to take advantage of.

Stark had protected, with his money and goons, his own schematics of his Iron Man suit right up until it had been shipped out with the rest of the pieces of the exhibit and into Darcy’s hands.

He had practically given it to her.

And since the drive was forever away, Darcy decided she’d make the best of her trip. She had stopped at her favorite cafe and got _the_ most delicious pumpkin spice latte in existence. And a moist chocolate cupcake, which she had scarfed down. There was an outdoor mall which she got her nails done, purple. Her absolute favorite color, (no thanks to her soulmate, the asshole) that _totally_ looked amazing on her.

The moment Darcy walked into the door of the post office, she immediately scanned the area to see if it was a trap. It could have been, certainly. But she was confident in her skills that nobody would have noticed the change. There wasn’t even an official date to the change when she had implemented it into the servers. There was no way that they could have seen when the change had been made, or that there was one at all.

Nobody gave Darcy a second glance as she opened the large box and pulled out a long cardboard tube that was designed to hold posters. Internally, Darcy wanted to squeal and shout out her excitement in accomplishing something that most people thought to be impossible. But she waited until she was in her car, and had wiped the last hour of security footage from her phone (Starkphone, because Apple sucked and Samsung was weird. Don’t even get her started on Hammertech, it was a plain embarrassment to look at), before she opened and pulled out the blueprints.

They looked so much… mouth watering in real life. The cardboard tube held every single blueprint they had on Iron Man, and even just glancing at them, Darcy was just enraptured. It was… the most brilliant thing she had ever seen in her life, she almost started to drool as she looked over each hand drawn line and scribbled note. Even more brilliant than that one time she made a Mob Boss put a hit out on Naruto (it's a long story). This, this was…

God, Darcy needed to make one herself.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcy will get a lot more funnier, I promise. Also, I'll update more than once next week, okay?
> 
> Comments? Questions? Conspiracy theories? Put them in the box below.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how I said I'd update more than once this week, and didn't? Yeah, sorry about that.

There was one certain fact about Darcy that basically summed herself up. She _hated_ being bored. And when she said the word, ‘hate’ she really meant it. She despised being bored with all of her soul, or whatever she had left of one, and couldn’t stand just standing around and do nothing. That’s why throughout her entire life, she has switched from one hobby to another, going up until she found herself restless or uninterested, and thus, switched onto something new and fantastic. The furthest she’s ever gotten in one singular activity was sky diving. And as fun and cool as that sounded, Darcy only lasted about 4 months before she got tired of it. The thrill had come and gone, and so had her attention.

The thing about Darcy, as smart as she was, was that she never learned that at one point, whatever hobby would stop being interesting and become boring. So whenever she set her sights on a new activity, she’d go all out. When Darcy had been into cooking, more specifically cooking desserts, she had the kitchen remodeled, new pans shipped in, and had bought all of the important cooking books. Now, she still cooks but only for special occasions, and Mastering Art of French Cooking was jammed under one of the tables in her workshop that had become the victim of an explosion (which was entirely not her fault, ever) and had lost a small chunk of it’s leg. Thankfully, both volumes (book one and two) were _just_ the right height for the broken leg, and had been super-glued together so that there wouldn't be any mishaps again. (And for the record, Darcy would like to point out that it was the stray cat, Fergie, who had accidentally knocked over her glass bowl of unidentifiable liquids onto a stripped power plug which Darcy had been using and hadn’t bothered to change because it belonged to one of her older tools. Which also happened to be resting on top of a box of bullets from a stray heist that happened a few weeks before. Which resulted in the sound of gunfire, and a very minor explosion which made Darcy panic and think her safe house was compromised and hide curled up in a ball for over twenty minutes trying to figure out if the imaginary hit-men were going to come in there and finish the job. It hadn’t helped when the police came not a few minutes later, and Darcy had a very interesting conversation. She still believes that the police force in the small town about twenty minutes away from her house think that she’s a crazy cat lady with too many anti-government theories.)

And as much as Darcy liked to think that she was intelligent, she was, in fact, not. At all.

“Okay,” she breathed to herself, her first prototype of a gauntlet around one hand and the other typing at a computer. “Let’s start this up slow.” Darcy watched intently at the homemade metal looking glove that was made, with all intents and purposes aside, love. It had taken her a few days to get the parts, from either looting a junkyard in the middle of the night, or even making them, for her makeshift armor. It was partially created, mostly because Darcy wanted to play with it first rather than later. Especially if she was making a mistake and needed to get something fixed up first.

Sparks flew from the plating in the middle of the palm, the glove slowly building up its energy. Darcy slowly clicked on the computer, which sent more power into the glove, watching it and making internal notes as to far it could go before it would either burst or crack under the pressure. The sparks grew into small pieces of flames, and then into a full flame which Darcy had to struggle against moving her arm. It wanted to go sideways, and unfortunately, the side of her workshop was sorta wood and that would mean burning down the entire building. Which would be a bad thing in Darcy’s book. She clicked the button a few more times, keeping her arm steady until there was a sharp metal _ting_ and something flew into the air. Darcy immediately ducked, first rule of the shop, and counted to twenty before opening her eyes and looking around her.

Interesting enough, it wasn’t the gauntlet that gave out on her, it was the connecting cables from the car battery to the gauntlet that had given up the ghost. The metal of the rigid sharp teeth were red, and suddenly Darcy had a thought strike her.

How on earth was she going to power her suit? Obviously the car battery wouldn't work, and she wanted it to be fast, and slim fitting. Not a random battery strapped to her back as she flew around. Stark, he had something to power it all, and not really surprising because of his sudden allergy to weapons had lead to power supplies. Technology didn’t work without electricity, and honestly at the time Darcy had thought Tony Stark decided that it would be the best way to control the market to have a clean fresh power source that didn’t pollute.

(Except for everything pollutes, and Darcy wouldn't believe anything could be a clean fresh power supply with the exception of natural electricity via sun or wind.)

Although a pressing issue, Darcy shoved the questions away and studied her suit, or the makings of it. Ransacked computer bits were clustered in piles around it, ready to be sharpened and used into her suit. But the thing was… the metal was cheap, and anything with enough force could get through it. It was bent, reshapened, and dents covered everywhere. It didn’t fit, even when Darcy had tried on the chest piece, it either was too loose or it pinched under her arms. And it was heavy, clumpy, and more importantly, would never be aerodynamic.

Darcy pulled the gauntlet off and threw it across the room, cursing. This wasn’t working out the way that she had hoped. She glared at the offending blueprints, who had beguiled her into making them with their enchanting whispers and fantastic dreams. She wanted to rip them up in her frustration, but pursed her lips and glared at them more until she sighed.

She knew exactly where she had messed up.

This wasn’t her dream, it was Tony Stark’s. She was creating _his_ suit, not her’s. No matter how many times she retried it, there was no chance that Darcy would have been happy with the outcome. Even if she made it perfect, just like the blueprints shown, there wasn’t any connection. No Darcy in it, only Tony. The blueprints, in their simplicity and their designs inspired her, made her want to make it. But Darcy didn’t think to make it _her own way_.

Giving the monstrosity that was created by everything but the kitchen sink one last nasty glare for wasting her time, Darcy pulled out a stack of blank graph paper and a sharpie and set it side by side to Stark’s blueprints, uncapped the pen, and started to work.

And this time, when she was going to do this, she wasn’t going to take the cheap way out. Oh no, this was all in. This was _war._

It wasn’t easy. Darcy’s hand cramped, like, four times. Her back started to ache after hour three, and her coffeemaker had been sacrificed in other to make Iron Darcy Version 1, so no caffeine. That is, until she trekked over to her house and stole the extra coffee machine in there and dragged it back to help her with her binge inventing.

Darcy did not invent. She could do it, with the right amount of motivation and with zero percent of sleep, and maybe one or two episodes of Doctor Who. (Tennant, for those who were asking.) The worst thing was diving head first into inventing with no clue on how she was going to work it. Yeah sure, there were a few ideas which she changed, like where the power supply was going to be (not even near the boobs, she had big tits already, and didn’t need anything else to draw eyes to them), or how the extra width of her waist was going to upset the aerodynamics of the suit. She wanted it to be sleek, shiny, and ready to give her a technology orgasm in her panties.

It took Darcy four days, more cups of coffee than she could count, and a point where her memory cuts out entirely for her plans to be completed. During that binge, she had called up a metalworking company and asked for several sheets of a steel-titanium metal to be meticulously bent in precise angles. The plan was for Darcy to receive the metal uncut, and then to reshape it using the curved metal to form her suit. She’d then piece it together. She’d have four layers, two of the metal, and two of kevlar. There was no doubt that what she was going to do might get her shot at, and she wasn’t going in there with an armor that could get cut through like a knife through butter.

The first layer would be the thickest, then kevlar throughout it, and _then_ the electronics and suspension systems. The original blueprints had called for spaces left for weapons, like missiles and other such explody things. However, Darcy didn’t really want those in her suit, so she scratched them out. But she put in a few tasers, just in case she had to neutralize somebody in her way without really harming them. After that, she put in a thinner sheet of the metal, and the final layer of kevlar and then padding around the insides. There was no way she was going to into this thing without some kind of padding.

It took Darcy a lot longer than she would have liked to have built the suit. Over all, it took her about two weeks from start to finish, but she’d put in at least twelve hours or more into it every single day. The final product would have made a grown man cry, and gazing at the finished silver suit, Darcy had managed to shed a few tears too. (She would like to have said that it was the sight of her final pieces of work coming together to create Iron Darcy Version 2, but it was actually because she had almost fallen over and had grabbed the nearest bench, causing it to fall over and land on her foot. She was running on fumes at the time, so crying was a no brainer.)

The unfortunate thing about it, was unless you were specifically looking at the shape (as in, seeing that were was a place for her boobs and that the power source was placed at hips), and had a clear face at the helmet (Darcy didn't like what Tony had put on his helmet, it looked too grim. So she gave her suit a smile, with upturned eyes. It looked like a mask from the universal drama sign, except without the sad mask attached), it looked eerily like Iron Man. And Darcy was _not_ going to go around and soil a perfectly good superheros name (who had a ton more money than her, and probably had like, some secret government connections to find out who Darcy was and then _sue_ her before putting her into prison permanently), and robbing banks for stealing candy from metaphorical babies was going to bring a whole legion of pissed off super-people after her, so nope. She wasn’t going to take that chance (even though it was going to happen no matter what, because there was only one real way to get a suit to even _match_ what Iron Man had going on. Yeah, there was a big chance of seeing some real life superhero action later on, but Darcy didn’t want them to be _angry_ ) so Darcy brought out the paint.

Purple. It was her favorite color and a big gigantic finger to whoever her soulmate is, because purple is awesome and a beautiful color. It’s both blue _and_ red. It’s like putting team Valor and Mystic together into one awesome color and then both of them living in harmony and peace. Darcy could sing odes as to how much she liked purple (even though she had only started liking it after her whole teenage rebellion years). It was the best color out there, and nobody could tell her otherwise.

It was more of an afternoon project, and within a couple of hours, the suit was completed. The paint still drying in some areas, because Darcy only added the purple to some parts of the suit, while the rest of it remained silver to remain diverse, she sat back in an old faded desk chair and looked at the empty slot where the power source was going to be. She was pretty invested in this project already, there was no backing out at this point. She was so far into this, it was going to be really hard trying to back out.

Turning around so that Darcy was facing her very much loved computer, she turned it on. Next to it, a coffee machine was brewing a sludge that would take the skin off her teeth, but absolutely necessary for what was going to come. Darcy was going to hack into SHIELD, because if anybody knew where to find a power source similar to what Stark has, it was going to be them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it means anything, this chapter alone completely doubles my number count. So yay, more words to read. :)  
> Ya'll should guess how many times I redid this stupid chapter. Seriously, I have this extra folder in my Drive that is simply labeled 'disappointment' and whenever I give up I simply drop the document in there. I have 3 chapter 1's, 4 chapter 2's, and now ya'll guess how many times I did this one.
> 
> Comments? Questions? Googling to see if anything I wrote is actually scientifically true? (Tbh, I simply googled which metals resisted gunfire, and then combined them both, idk if it'd work...)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote chapter 3 about four times. Just saying.
> 
> (Also, the start of the rated M begins here.)

Tony Stark first became aware that somebody had stolen something from him when an arc reactor that he lent to SHIELD had (very mysteriously) disappeared. There were dozens of words that somebody could describe Tony Stark, but the moment he had found out that his tech had ‘apparently’ gained sentience and walked off without anybody noticing it, the word to describe him was angry.

In actuality, it was spitting mad.

Because of all of his time trying to keep his tech out of people's hands, guess what SHIELD just did. Let it walk off. And not to mention the last fiasco that happened with SHIELD didn’t really give Tony a lot of confidence as to who had his tech. Hydra was a pain in the ass, especially since they put on the metaphorical mustache disguise and pretended to be the good guys when they were secretly rubbing their hands together and cackling every time they fooled anybody. And figuring they were in SHIELD since the start, it didn’t give Tony any reason as to really believe that Fury had really ‘lost’ the arc reactor.

“Have you even checked the thousands of cameras you have everywhere?” Tony snapped at Fury, who for once, didn’t look angry. Well. At Stark. Maybe angry for whoever blundered at keeping an item that they had heavily paid for in it’s proper place.

“Who do you think I am, Stark?” Fury barked, “an idiot? It was one of the first things we checked when we discovered it was missing. All of the cameras either went off online or were rerouted into playing the same five seconds over and over again.”

“Oh my God, the one time SHIELD has a crap system.” Tony put his head in his hands and groaned, “please tell me you at least had some firewalls protecting the cameras, or I might just cry.”

“We had military grade protection on those feeds.” Fury pursed his lips, frowning heavily.

“Sooo nothing then.” Tony moaned, “absolutely nothing. I could hack into anything military grade when I was in middle school.”

“Not everybody is a genius, Stark. We’re compiling a list as to who could have had the motives and the means to hack into the system and to get in and out without anybody noticing.”

“Wait, nobody noticed? Don’t you have guys who look at security monitors all day? Shouldn’t they have looked at a screen and say, “hmm, nobody has been through to the cafeteria even though it’s lunch, how weird,’ like at all?” Tony asked, and by the way Fury was giving him a death glare, that meant no. Not at all. “You’re suppose to be the spy government! How do people get in and out of your stupid little fortress without any alarms going off, and without letting anybody notice what was wrong?! What the hell, Fury? How could they have done this without you knowing?!”

* * *

 

The answer to that particular question, my dear Readers, was coffee.

* * *

 

“Hey Carl!” Darcy smiled cheerfully to the security guard who was in front of the elevators. Her arms were full, double stacked coffee cups held precariously in her hands, and a small bag of danishes on top, held together by her chin pressing down. There was a Starbucks about two buildings down, and obviously the most popular place to get coffee in the area. “Oh shit,” Darcy swayed, glancing down. “My ID is in my front pocket,” she glanced at the dangerously hot drinks in her hands. “Could you, maybe possibly grab it or…”

“No problem,” said Carl, who was possibly _the_ most gay person Darcy had ever met, and reached over and clicked the ‘up’ button for the elevator. “Say hi to guys up there for me on the way in, okay?”

“Yeah yeah!” Darcy shot him her most appreciated smile. “Thanks so much. See you later for that office party on the forty fifth floor, right?” The elevator arrived, empty, thankfully. Darcy walked in carefully, and hit a button with her elbow.

“I- I’ll be there.” Carl called out, and the doors closed.

* * *

 

“And the cameras? Literally picked up on nothing? A fly could fart in the building and you’d have triplicate forms filled out before the day was over.” Tony pointed an accusing finger at the screen where Fury was watching.

* * *

 

Darcy sat the coffee on the ground carefully before hitting the emergency stop button on the elevator. It shuddered beneath her, and slowed to a grinding stop before making a loud groan. Barely blinking an eye at the elevators stop, Darcy pulled out a screwdriver from her left sock and pried open the paneling where the buttons were. It was a mess of wires and blinking lights, but sure enough there was a small access point into the computer system. It was suppose to log where the elevator stopped and when it arrived. Underneath the coffee cups was a small computer, and Darcy wasted no time to hook it up and break into the weakest link in the entire building.

Like, seriously, even the wifi password has more security than the elevator. And Darcy didn’t want to go bulldozing around, not when people were actively looking to see if anybody was hacking. She was a pro at it, but she knew when to be smart enough not to hack.

Within just a few minutes, before the elevators timer went off to continue working again, Darcy had switched all of the cameras off within about fifty floors on both sides of her target. And wow, gee. Thomas Gilehand, the security guard who was watching all of the security feeds got this call from his wife. Apparently somebody had sent her an email full of pictures of her husband leaving hotel rooms with very beautiful women in the doorway. Oops, was that a secret?

* * *

 

“You train spies! How the hell did somebody sneak past all of the _spies_ who are trained to look for this kinds of things?! Are you saying that nobody noticed anything that was happening at all? People who are trained to look for things out of place, and yet, they didn’t see anything wrong that somebody was _walking out of the building with my arc reactor?”_

* * *

 

“Okay, so what if it was aliens?” Darcy leaned over the counter, giving the very poor science geek a fair view of her cleavage. She had come into the R&D labs and had given the guys and gals their fair share of coffee and danishes. They hadn’t even said thank you, they just swarmed her until her hands were empty.

Jerks.

The poor geek wasn’t even being subtle. He was blatantly staring at her cleavage, and wasn’t even glancing up at Darcy’s face. He swallowed. “Ah- uh- aliens have been confirmed to be existing, due to what happened in New York, so the conclusion that aliens is possible.”

“Really? Oh, I can’t wait to tell my friends down in IT, they don’t believe that aliens would have stolen my panties. It’s not logical, they said. But nobody lives with me, and I have my own washer and dryer. Where could they have gone if it wasn’t aliens?” Darcy leaned further, until her face was uncomfortably close.

“You want to see if I have any on right now?” She breathed.

The poor geek didn’t stand a chance. He just kept on staring at her boobs while he nodded fiercely.

* * *

 

“If you had just gotten the damn upgrades that Stark Industries were offering, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now!” Tony threw his hands in the arm, “they were affordable, and you wouldn't have this problem breathing down your neck! When it comes to my tech, nobody can crack it.”

* * *

 

“Damn it,” Darcy cursed under her breath. It was _right there_ , right in front of her eyes. The only thing that was blocking her and from this ‘arc reactor’ was a glass case that was so cheerfully stamped with the Stark Industries logo. This wasn’t part of the plan at all. It wasn’t mentioned in any of the files or office notices that had been floating around in the email system (which was very hackable, just saying). This was a wrench in her plan. What looked like a very difficult, 16-digit combination, with a thumb print scanner, wrench.

On the floor beside her, the science geek, who she found out his name is Ryder (what a cool name for a weird kid) when he told her as he grabbed her ass and told her that he was going to give her the best night of her life. (It was barely 8 AM. Ew.) He had obviously been channeling his inner porn star, because he had told her that she was going to wish to be filled by his ‘lil Ryder every day of the week after this.

Darcy had only played along, to her sickening horror (because ew), until Ryder had unlocked the very highly secure vault (seriously, that’s where he wanted to have sex in. Darcy didn’t have to coerce him into doing this at all) which he and six other people in the entire building had access too (way to go ‘lil Ryder). After the door was closed, Darcy had brought out a syringe and stabbed Ryder in the thigh, who had made pathetic whiney noises until he passed out. The mixture was a little bit of everything, something that would make him have vivid dreams and to have a really hard time remembering everything he did for the last few hours.

She could see it, the glow from the arc reactor a beautiful blue. She couldn’t wait to get back home, to her little farm house, and plug in her suit. She didn’t even know if it would work yet, and the excitement of being able to do anything she wanted with her suit, made it a lot more frustrating to know that somehow, she was suppose to get through this annoyance. Stark Industries was known for it’s security, there was no possible way to get through something that Stark had made (unless, you know, hacking), and Darcy couldn’t hack a lock.

Well… unless…

Darcy glanced around and found just what she was looking for. A fire extinguisher. It was in her hands, and she pulled the pin. She knew she didn’t have much time. Any extra time besides the mental countdown of all of the different alarms around her was a complete blessing. Her leather gloves bit into her hand as she gripped the fire extinguisher. Cocking the nozzle, she pulled the trigger, coating the box with foam. It was loud in the small room, making Darcy stand on edge.

A few seconds later, after the constant stream of foam, sparks flew. Using the canister, Darcy brushed the foam off of the screen. It was rebooting, thank goodness for the fact that not all wires in keypads were actually sealed, and thus any type of liquid could short it out.

Darcy didn’t hesitate before slamming the canister down on the screen and keypad, mutilating the metal and computer chips inside. A girl gotta do what a girl gotta do. She continued to assault the poor lock. More sparks flew, and there was a disgusting smell of burnt wires and battery acid, and there was a sucking noise before the lid popped open.

Darcy grabbed the arc reactor, and shoved it down her shirt.

* * *

 

“Look, Stark. We’re on it.” Fury interrupted Tony’s rant. “This is a SHIELD problem right now-”

“SHIELD problem my ass!” Tony scoffed.

“-and we don’t need you coming in and sniffing around. The Avengers will be notified if anything comes up that we don’t already know.”

“Which is anything. If some jackass comes and destroys New York with an army of robots all with arc reactors, I’m going to tear your agency apart!” Tony pointed an accusing finger again at Fury. “And don’t think I’ll sick Pepper on you already, she’s already with the lawyers.”

“Stark, we’re doing all that we can.” Fury gripped both sides of his desk, leaning in. “This is SHIELD's number one priority. If some jackass comes to destroy New York with an army of robots, I’ll personally hand in my resignation."

“Oh believe me,” Tony narrowed his eyes, “by then it’ll be too late.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh guys, I'm so sorry. The updates have been going at the bare minimum recently, and I don't know. I've been having second thoughts about this... it's been giving me such a hard time. I really want this to go off with an awesome start, and I want it to be fun to read and... idk, it's hard.
> 
> Comments? What are your favorite parts? What do you think will happen?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you. You're all so nice.

**3 months two days nineteen hours and six minutes later**

* * *

 

Okay, Darcy had to admit this was one of her more stupid ideas.

It was worse than that one time when she had jumped off a building to avoid some bodyguards, and had (luckily) grabbed a flagpole on the way down and sprained her ankle. Or that one time she had done the wasabi challenge, simply because somebody on facebook was making fun of a youtube video (and not the nice kind of making fun). Or that one time when she went to high school, before she dropped out, when she had snuck in with her bestie, Jane, and spent the entire night mixing different chemicals and blah and managed to create this _awesome_ drug that they sold to the students in their (hellish) school. (Not to mention the fact that Darcy had easily made about three thousand dollars in two weeks, and that was after she had split it with Jane. She would say it was the only time in her life she made so much easy money, but after robbing a few banks blind, that wasn’t really true. Maybe in an ‘honest, we exchanged cash’ sort of way instead of 'hacking into accounts and transferring the money to Timbuktu and back' way.)

But the thing was, Darcy wasn’t as scared as she was before about this. Not since Iron Darcy Version Two (IDV2) came into play. The thrill of piloting the suit hasn’t even faded since she plugged in the arc reactor almost three months ago, and even if she had to stay low to the ground as to not hit any weird sensors the government might’ve had, Darcy had say that she has become adept at not hitting any stray trees. Actually, she’s become very good at turning at sharp corners and avoiding things, after that one instance with a bear. (Yogi Bear is a lie. They tend to froth at the mouth and he didn’t say anything about food. Bears are _vicious_. Even after Darcy had escaped, her suit still bore the brunt of the teeth marks.)

Even so, it was Ian who asked her. Ian, that one guy who she slept with for about an entire week after they both broke into the British Museum of Art and tried to steal the same painting. Ian, the guy who had a cute smile and adorable eyes and spoke in a British accent that sometimes still gave Darcy the lady shivers. Darcy remembered meeting Ian for the first time fondly, when she was lowering herself down from the ceiling vent with a harness and he came out of _nowhere_ (from disabling the floor sensors) and kicked her in the face. The hate-sex after was pretty good (oh God, the _tongue_ Ian had) and after they cleared out of the museum, still stinking of sex, they had forged another exact replica together and sold it to the others boss. (Darcy was still unsure if she had actually sold the real one or not. She had switched it with Ian before she had left, but knowing him he might’ve switched them again. It was a classic Princess Bride moment, except without poison. And luckily, neither ex-boss had seemed to know the difference and no hired guns were after them for their deceit. So bonus.)

Ian, for all intents and purposes, had sent a job offer to Darcy and even though she should have said no because it involved a lot of sensitive things, she still accepted it. Ian, who promised her he had this perfect plan, one that fooled even the best of technology. (Which Darcy doubted. If all else, Darcy was a hacker. And she was a firm believer that sentient artificial intelligence was already among humans and was biding its time before becoming Skynet two point oh, and destroying the Earth.) Ian himself couldn’t do the job, he was mooching up to some boss-lady who liked spoiling young, handsome, British boys in Miami. Last photo she saw of Ian was on Facebook was of him smiling while sitting in the front seat of a very expensive car. He had certainly settled down from the whole thieving business to become a pampered pet, but that didn’t mean he didn’t look at potential jobs. He had even sent a few to Darcy, which had led to some very compromising areas (but only for women) that Darcy had bragged about. (Of all the places in the world, Darcy would never set foot in another lesbian bar if she could help it.)

The job itself was fairly easy. Somebody out there in the world had hired Darcy for a grand total of two million to steal a pearl necklace, and when Darcy gave it to the anonymous boss, she would get an additional five million. And ever since building IDV2, Darcy’s wallet had been making some sad wheezing noises. It was expensive, the suit costing about eleven million dollars, taking up most of Darcy’s savings. This job would definitely replenish her empty bank account(s). For a job this rewarding, and for such little work, Darcy would automatically be suspicious. And yeah, the reason being is that the pearl necklace belong to one Maria Stark, and was currently residing in, you guessed it, the Met.

The Met, where all of this began. There was a permanent collection of Maria and Howard Stark’s items in storage, to occasionally be shown every five years on the anniversary their deaths. They never moved anywhere from the Met itself, just to and fro from storage and display. So Darcy’s fabulous technique of sending the item itself via mail wouldn't work. And months after the Avengers Exhibit, Stark hasn’t taken down _any_ of the security, making newspapers across the globe proclaiming that the Met is considered the safest place to display art.

Exception being; Darcy + Iron suit + the ability to go through walls = a good chance at completing the heist. Which was easily _the_ most stupidest thing Darcy had ever had the pleasure of doing. There wasn’t going to be a chance to do the delicate art of thieving in the Met. No classic laser grid to cartwheel through (Darcy was pretty sure her tits would, alone, set off the alarms. It’s been a few years since she did the cartwheeling thing) or pressing numbers into a keypad. No, Darcy was going to bulldoze right into the archives, steal the necklace, and escape.

First off, Darcy had to think of the cons. All of America would probably see a picture of her fabulous purple suit after tonight. The Met is located in New York, and so are the Avengers, who’d probably take her awesome suit as a threat and she’d get attacked. Iron Man, who is significantly more skilled at, well, mostly _everything_ and wasn’t afraid of blowing up Darcy with a tank missile (which was included in the first blueprints, thank you very much).

The pros were, Darcy got paid a _lot_ of money. She might _not_ get blown up by a tank missile. Most likely will get to see Captain America (and if she’s very lucky, she might even get to touch his _butt_ ). Steal from the Met not once, but twice. In a row. And she’d get to test her own invention against Iron Man (albeit it is kinda his invention but she designed everything in hers, even increasing the function of the arc reactor). Annnd, she might get away and cackle about it another day.

Yeah, Darcy was really being stupid at this point. But she couldn’t really bring herself to care. This is what she really wanted, to somehow mash her awesome hobby into her daily job (which was more like a nightly job), and to have _fun_. Flying around in her armor was fun. Stealing was fun. So by that logic, stealing in her flying armor must be _double_ fun. Or terrifying. Honestly, at this point, who knew.

Darcy crouched in the dark, staring intently down at the lit up building of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her suit gave out readings, giving her various data points. It was all voice activated, and it depended on what she said as to what it would do. (Unfortunately, she didn’t have a fanny pack that she could strap on to be her computer, it all had to fit in _somewhere,_ and Darcy didn’t have the space to have some highly advanced computer in her suit. How Stark did it, Darcy may never know.) Nobody was in the building save for a couple of security guards who had been wandering around long enough that Darcy knew their pattern via infrared. It was about 4 AM, too early in the morning to be asleep but too late to stay up. Hopefully this might give Darcy a minute two or more before the Avengers decided to give her their own kind of wake up call.

Plus, she hoped that none of them had any coffee. (A terrible thing to wish on another person, but Darcy needed any advantage that she could get.)

Her suit moved silently as Darcy stood up. She had spent the last few hours watching the museum, her heart pounding the entire time. Just waiting for the moment when the Avengers would sneak up behind her and smear the pavement with her purple suit. Except no attack came, and Darcy hopes that her recon on the building might remain unnoticed came true.

“Good morning Starshine, the Earth says hello.” Darcy said, activating the suit all the way until it was online. It hummed around her, a comforting feeling. She took one more breath before bracing her foot against the edge of the building and jumping off. She landed with a crunch, the concrete beneath her boots crumbling. Her systems came online, and Darcy bent her head upwards as she activated her repulsors and shot into the Met.

Immediately alarms cut into the air, everything flashing into a red pulsing color. Darcy had come through the wall and into another few dry walls that had housed some exhibit (ancient Egyptian artifacts, thank goodness. Nobody really found those to be _that_ interesting. If they were paintings on the other hand, Darcy might’ve regretted doing this), but she slowed herself down to arrive at a couple of double doors leading downwards towards the archives.

Darcy reached out with one gloved covered hand, and found that the door was locked as it resisted against moving. For a complete and whole second, Darcy looked at the door in bewilderment, somehow trying to think about how she could get to a pair of lock picks she hid in the seams of her suit to quickly unlock it, before she finally came to her senses and ripped the door off the wall. Which was _really_ cool. Darcy needed to do that more often, because she just felt a boost to her ego.

Then there was a high pitched _ping_ noise, and Darcy snapped her attention over to a guard (dammit she should have known they might’ve been faster than she thought) who was pointing a gun at her.

“Really?” Darcy’s modulated voice came through her suit, “I just got this painted.” She closed her fist and pointed her arm at the guard who didn’t even stop _shooting at her_ (thank goodness for all of her layers, even if the bullets kept on bouncing off of the first one) and squeezed her fist two times. A taser seemed to pop out of her arm and shot the man, who jerked and dropped the gun.

Already Darcy had wasted too much time, and she knew it. Not sparing another glance at the guard she disappeared down into the archives, which were a lot bigger than she’d thought they’d be. But she knew where they kept the necklace, and she flew her way over there instead of walking. (It was better than Heelies, the skating shoes.)

The box wasn’t hard to find, though it was on a higher shelf. The necklace was pretty. It reminded Darcy of Julia Child, from watching all of those cooking shows. A compartment opened up on her thigh, and Darcy dropped the pearl necklace in. Now it was time to escape as fast as possible. Back to the door, fly through the walls she crashed through, and out of the building.

And that is, unfortunately, where Darcy’s luck ended.

A blast of blue light, exactly like the arc reactor color hit Darcy, and she flew backwards, losing control of her flight. She didn’t go through a building, but had managed to hit the top of one. And skipped across the top like a stone across water until her suit slid to a stop. Darcy was very, _very_ glad that she had put in padding in the suit, but she definitely needed to add some more around her head. Already a headache was starting to form against her eyes as she picked herself back up.

“Not that I don’t like the effort, but purple really isn’t your color, copycat.” Darcy watched through the slightly cracked HUD (wtf, you’re suppose to be uncrackable) screen as Iron Man smoothly touched down on the roof and held his palms out at her threateningly. Iron Man was witty and smart with his mouth, judging by the various compilations of youtube videos out there of various battles. All of them featuring Iron Man in some way, saying a pun or something before doing something either genius or extremely stupid. But... Out of all of the things to say, those were the very _last_ words that Darcy would have expected.

Immediately she knew. It was like a sucker punch to the gut. One millisecond, Darcy had been somewhat normal with annoying words, and the next, she was past normal and still had assholeish words but they were a different color. She could feel the tingle across her skin. But even the knowledge that maybe Darcy should _keep her big mouth shut and blast off like Team Rocket_ , she opened her mouth and snarked right back.

“At least I don’t look like a melted down version of a Hot Wheels car.” She taunted, and immediately regretted all of her life decisions.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Duh, duh, DUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH.
> 
> Questions? Comments? Theories? What was your favorite line? Put them in the box below.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters will be coming out every single Sunday, and maybe another one during the middle of the week. Who knows. Even I don't.
> 
>  
> 
>   
> [Join me on Tumblr](https://ragingstucky.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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